four-horse tallyho coach, with fifteen or twenty men already in it. It
was a fine chance to see the sights of the city, and the party had a
merry time, with plenty of beer handed up from inside. So they drove
downtown and stopped before an imposing granite building, in which they
interviewed an official, who had the papers all ready, with only the
names to be filled in. So each man in turn took an oath of which he did
not understand a word, and then was presented with a handsome ornamented
document with a big red seal and the shield of the United States upon
it, and was told that he had become a citizen of the Republic and the
equal of the President himself.

A month or two later Jurgis had another interview with this same man,
who told him where to go to "register." And then finally, when election
day came, the packing houses posted a notice that men who desired to
vote might remain away until nine that morning, and the same night
watchman took Jurgis and the rest of his flock into the back room of a
saloon, and showed each of them where and how to mark a ballot, and then
gave each two dollars, and took them to the polling place, where there
was a policeman on duty especially to see that they got through all
right. Jurgis felt quite proud of this good luck till he got home and
met Jonas, who had taken the leader aside and whispered to him, offering
to vote three times for four dollars, which offer had been accepted.

And now in the union Jurgis met men who explained all this mystery
to him; and he learned that America differed from Russia in that its
government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials who
ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there
were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one
got the office which bought the most votes. Now and then, the election
was very close, and that was the time the poor man came in. In the